Chapter 5 introduces the first major theme on our tour, Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness.
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The key chapters include:
- Autopoiesis and Cellular Cognition (Ch 6)
- Bacteria and the brain (Ch 7)
- Immune system cognition (Ch 8)
- Brain-based cognition (Ch 9)
- The Self (Ch 10)
- Human-machine (Ch 11)
The chapter also addresses the issue of consciousness and unconsciousness, as well as what we mean by the embodied mind and the literature surrounding it. Our goal, as travel guides in this Atlas, is to be provocateurs. We want to excite and challenge researchers to transform these various areas of research into transdisciplinary topics of study in social complexity. Each chapter provides what we see as the most promising avenues of research. Combined, they make for a range of new research themes.
KEY WORDS: cognition, embodied mind, emotion, cellular cognition, bacterial social behaviours, consciousness.
Here is a preview of some of the general argument made in this chapter:
Earth, cellular life, - 3.7 billion years:
“The mind is in every cell of the body”[1] as the American sociologist, S. Lee Spray said when reflecting on the radical nature of our embodied existence. The social behaviours of bacteria and cellular cognition,[2] gut microbiota and the embodied mind,[3] cognitive assemblages formed from human and nonconscious machine intelligence,[4] the nonlinear dynamics of therapy, including synergy and self-organisation,[5] network approaches to diagnosis and psychopathology,[6] dynamical and computational social psychology,[7] and the role of collective psychologies in complex social systems – these are some of the pressings topics that sit at the intersection of complexity, biology, cognitive science and psychology, which hold our focus in this theme.
Of the various complexity topics in the human sciences, the numerous studies revolving around the topics of cognition, emotions, and consciousness are some of the most radical and the least organised. No summary of or even title exists for this collective work. Its various theories, concepts and empirical insights are spread out across so many different fields of study, from neuroscience, cognitive psychology and embodied mind studies to anthropology, biology, and infectious disease research to philosophy, social psychology, and the digital humanities. We will therefore simply use the gathering phrase we just outlined and simply call it cognition, emotions, and consciousness. If anything, it cuts straight cross disciplines, making it a truly transdisciplinary topic. Notice we did not use the term ‘human’ to demarcate this research topic. While human cognition is a focus, many of the ideas that researchers have been working on apply to cognition, emotions, and consciousness across the entire phylogenetic tree of life, even extending to bacteria and plant life. The research we will review also comes from across the sciences. One of the key challenges for the study of social complexity is to engage the wider social sciences. While our review highlights work grounded in a complex systems perspective, we will explore other research that helps to advance this perspective, including work that is critical of it. Finally, our goal, as travel agents, is to be provocateurs, to challenge researchers to transform these various areas of research into transdisciplinary topics of study in social complexity.
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[1] S. Lee Spray was Brian Castellani’s dissertation advisor. He came up with this statement in 1997 during a conversation. It epitomized Spray’s visionary views on cognition and consciousness, realised through the research taking place today.
[2] Jacob, Eshel Ben, Israela Becker, Yoash Shapira, and Herbert Levine. "Bacterial linguistic communication and social intelligence." TRENDS in Microbiology 12, no. 8 (2004): 366-372.
[3] Cryan, John F., and Timothy G. Dinan. "Mind-altering microorganisms: the impact of the gut microbiota on brain and behaviour." Nature reviews neuroscience 13, no. 10 (2012): 701-712.
[4] Hayles, N. Katherine. Unthought: The power of the cognitive nonconscious. University of Chicago Press, 2017.
[5] Adele M. Hayes and Jennifer L. Strauss, ‘Dynamic Systems Theory as a Paradigm for the Study of Change in Psychotherapy: An Application to Cognitive Therapy for Depression.’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 66, no. 6 (1998): 939.
[6] Denny Borsboom and Angélique O.J. Cramer, ‘Network Analysis: An Integrative Approach to the Structure of Psychopathology’, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 9, no. 1 (28 March 2013): 91–121, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-050212-185608.
[7] Andrzej Nowak and Robin R. Vallacher, Dynamical Social Psychology (Guilford Press, 1998).
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